Interview

Lilly Devon

Who are you, and what do you do?

My name is Lilly Devon and I'm the founder and creative director of a tiny indie video game company called Little Wolf Studio Ltd. I've been in the games industry for over 10 years now, with experience in game design, project/art management and spinning plates like a pro. I'm an extremely visually motivated individual and often compare myself to a magpie - OOOOO, SHINY! I've worked on some cool games over the years - however, more than half of them have been canned, as is the way of things.

I'm now working on my own game for PS4, with a focus on creating something visually and emotionally heavy hitting. We've not announced anything officially yet and you'll most likely find me on Twitter sharing other people's artwork like the nice person I am (magpie).

What hardware do you use?

I work on an Alienware laptop - model M18X R2. It's a bit old now, but does the job. I also have a second monitor setup which is a Dell thingy, but nothing to write home about. Honesty, everything is a bit out of date, runs slowly and needs a spring clean - BUT, it works, so there's that.

I've always been a Windows/PC user - anything Mac freaks me out, to be perfectly honest. I used it once... oh, the flashbacks. I have also used green screens and an external studio mic (by iSK), if that counts as hardware - which is always fun but a pain to get working properly.

And what software?

I use both Unity 3D and Unreal 4. Our game is being developed using one of those (I can't tell you which one, I'd have to kill you). I also use Visio for design flow, Excel for spreadsheet goodness, MS Project for schedules and Photoshop for arty bits.

I probably shouldn't say this, but you sometimes can't beat a bit of MS Paint either... you know, for screengrabs. I use Mozilla Thunderbird as my email client and Word for all my writing.

What would be your dream setup?

You know that scene in the Matrix where Neo is sitting in the ship with all of those stacked monitors looking like some kind of haxxor king? Yeah, that. I've always wanted as many monitors as my laptop/computer can manage, but that means taking out a second mortgage to buy a badass graphics card. If money wasn't an object, I'd buy the Alienware Area-51 as I just love them. Ever since using this laptop I've been converted to Alienware. And come on, let's face the fact that they look the shit, plus come with some rather juicy specs. I'd put all of that (and my 6 monitors) in a soundproof room, where I would also have a 4K projector (for reasons) and a Bose surround sound system.

Honestly? I would just like to have a machine that could handle opening both Photoshop and my game engine at the same time, without taking everything out in its path and dramatically jumping to its blue-screen demise.